by Torsten Steinfatt on March 10, 2010
Caring for an elderly Mom or Dad can be daunting. Talk to them about their wishes.
If you have an aging parent, you probably have received advice from friends and experts to start talking with your parent now about issues such as finances, health and safety concerns.
You know you shouldn’t delay any longer, and you definitely should not wait until a crisis occurs.
However, it is tough to know how to get started. You respect your parent’s privacy. You have had no experience or training for this. It is downright uncomfortable.
You may be thinking,
How do I find out what my parent really wants and what he/she expects from me?
How do I broach sensitive subjects?
What if they get upset with me?
What if they refuse to talk with me?
It’s important to realize it takes just one event to change your parent’s world and yours. My mother’s health deteriorated rapidly in a 3-month period due to a viral infection. A seemingly simple fall can result in a broken hip or brain injury. An aneurysm can result in a coma.
None of us can predict the future. But, we certainly can start the conversations with our parent now. Let me share some tips.
- Start with an understanding of how your motivation and your parent’s motivation differ. David Solie in his book, How to Say It To Seniors, tells us that the primary driver in the elderly is to “maintain control.” That makes sense when you think about the losses they are experiencing; the loss of strength, health, and friends. As adult children, our primary driver is “safety”! We have to learn to assist, not insist.
- Plan a special visit of 2 or 3 days with your parent. During this time, just plan to be present, listen and walk beside your parent in their daily routines. This means putting your laptop, blackberry and phone away. The first time I did this, I was amazed. I gained insight into my mother’s world, and the experience also helped me transition from my fast-paced world to hers. A natural result of the visit was a deepened trust and openness between my mother and me.
- Broach sensitive discussions with thoughtful wording, such as using the phrase, “What If”. “What if your arthritis gets worse and you need help in your home” or “What if one day you need full-time care?” If your parent doesn’t want to talk about it at that time, know that you’ve planted a seed. It also helps to share these conversations with your other siblings (who may live states away from you and your parent). Try to get family members on the same page.
So, start with a sincere desire to understand your parent, their fears, needs and wishes. Put yourself in their shoes, and listen, non-judgmentally. Build a foundation of trust and sharing. That foundation is what will help guide you through the conversations you need to have with your parent now and in the future.
Want to learn more about communicating with an aging parent and siblings?
Obtain Dale Carter’s entire Ecourse, “Five Essential Strategies to Help Your Aging Parent Face Change” at http://www.transitionagingparents.com/
About Dale Carter
The above article was written by Dale Carter and published with permission. Dale Carter is the founder of Transition Aging Parents, providing information and insight for adult children of aging parents so they can “thrive and find joy” in every stage of life. Besides her blog, articles, and newsletter, she hosts a weekly radio show, interviewing authors and experts. Her book, “The 6 Steps to Guide an Aging Parent through Change & Crisis” will be published later in 2010.
At Home Instead Senior Care
Home Instead Senior Care has many additional resources to help you with having those often difficult conversations with your aging parent. There is a 40-70 Rule booklet which you can download at this link: The 40-70 Rule. You can also reference the website and book, The Stages of Senior Care. And, lastly, you can preview our Richmond digital brochure here: Home Instead Senior Care of Richmond.
And, remember, we’re here to help. Just call our Richmond senior care offices at 804.527.1100 — we’re here for you anytime, day or night, whenever you need assistance.
by Teresa Steinfatt on March 9, 2010
If you’re not familiar with it, The New York Times has a well-written blog column in the health section called The New Old Age. The column often features topics of caring and coping with stories of people who are being full-time family caregivers either for a spouse, a parent of other loved one. There are often senior health related topics as well.
Home Instead CEO Paul Hogan quoted in The New York Times's New Old Age Blog
Last week, writer Paula Span featured a caregiver column entitled, “Will Boomers be any Different?” In the column, she says that “…the the No. 1 question I encounter when I speak to family caregivers is how to cajole old people into adapting to increasing disability when they are, to be a tad euphemistic, “fiercely independent.”
“In 20 or so years, when we baby boomers enter the ranks of the “old-old” ourselves, will we be any different?,” she asks.
She interviewed our very own Home Instead CEO, Paul Hogan, who was in Richmond last week meeting with the Boomer Project, a market research firm specializing in marketing to Boomers.
“We’ll see more seniors coming directly to us for help in the next 10 years, versus the past 10 when it was a daughter or son calling us and tearing their hair out,” says Hogan.
With the Depression generation…agreeing to home care “takes a doctor’s ultimatum: ‘You’re not going home from the hospital unless you get help, because you’ll break that other hip.’” But Mr. Hogan’s own mother, a businesswoman in her 70s, has long paid financial advisers, child care workers and housekeepers. “She sees getting help when she’s older as just another in the long line of services she’s taken advantage of throughout her career,” Mr. Hogan reported.
For boomers, though,“the concept of reaching a certain age, leaving work, and disengaging from our lives and social networks is anathema,” said Matt Thornhill, president of the Boomer Project. “We get a lot of our self-fulfillment from work – and we’re going to need the income,” Mr. Thornhill said. So we may not be so amenable to leaving our homes, either — or giving up our cars.
Whether Boomers will really be any different than our parents in the next 20 years is yet to be seen. But we certainly are more willing to outsource and pay for services that are parents didn’t. And, as Ms. Span points out,
“In fact, we’ll probably have to accept hired help. As a generation, we’ve had far fewer children than our parents, and we’re less likely to be married. Even if we prefer to rely on unpaid care when we’re sick or frail, our smaller families may be stretched too thin to provide it.”
“The reputation of older people is that they get stuck in their ways,” Mr. Thornhill mused. But that may not pertain to boomers. “We’ve always been so adaptive. Life for us has been change.”
If you’d like to read the full blog post and the comments, you can simply click on this link: NYTimes New Old Age Blog – Will Boomers Be Any Different?
If you would like more information about Home Instead Senior Care, please call our Richmond home care office at 804.527.1100.
by Torsten Steinfatt on March 8, 2010
Though the economy is in decline, 133 franchise companies inspired strong franchisee satisfaction in results released recently by Franchise Business Review. This is the organization’s fifth consecutive year of conducting this study, researching more than 500 of today’s leading franchise brands representing 100,000-plus franchisees.
The top five winners in the large class (systems with 200 units or more) were Heaven’s Best, Home Instead Senior Care, Sotheby’s International Realty, Weed Man and Aaron’s Sales & Lease Ownership.
Home Instead Senior Care ranked best in the senior care category as well as second in large class!
Top winners say that franchisee satisfaction correlates with business success. “Our owners’ satisfaction is one of the most critical factors we consider to analyze our business to further invest in our network,” said Yoshino Nakajima, Chief Development Officer of Home Instead Senior Care, among the nation’s top non-medical home care and companionship companies, ranked first in this year’s senior care category as well as second in large class. “The survey provides us so much information on franchise support, training, initial visits, marketing and communication, and serves as a health index of our network,” she added.
For instance, Home Instead Senior Care received among its highest rankings – 4.5 of 5 – in the area of franchisee relationships. “Relationships are such an important part of our success and that carries over to our customers as well,” Nakajima added. “To us, it’s personal.”
Here at Home Instead Senior Care of Richmond and Northern Neck, we couldn’t be more satisfied. And we are very proud of this prestigious recognition as we’ve been a franchise owner since 1997. For more information about our CAREGiving services, simply call our Richmond home care office at 804.527.1100. We’d be glad to talk to you about your in home care and senior home care needs.
